Was a pdf that included images of Donald Trump with women deleted from the Epstein Library hours after the Department of Justice released the files as required by a new federal law? Yes, that's true: EFTA00000468.pdf was included in the files downloaded from the site soon after the link was made public, but it was no longer accessible on Saturday, December 20, 2025. It was a photograph of framed and unframed photos on a desk, including one that showed Trump with several women wearing swimsuits and another previously-released image of Trump with his future wife Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published by the @EdKrassen account on X on December 20, 2025. The caption read:
BREAKING -- Evidence of a Blatant Epstein Cover-Up
Trump's DOJ appears to be quietly removing Epstein files that reference Donald Trump after those files were already publicly released.
Here's what happened:
Yesterday at approximately 4:00 PM ET, I, along with others, downloaded the full photo library made available on the DOJ's website. That release included File EFTA00000468.pdf, which contained photographs of Donald Trump.As of this morning, that same file no longer appears in the DOJ's download list. It has been removed.
This means that sometime overnight, the DOJ deleted the only known photograph of Donald Trump that appeared in the Epstein files -- after the public had already accessed it.
If a Trump-related file was removed only after people noticed and downloaded it, the obvious question is this:
How many other photos or documents were quietly scrubbed before anyone ever saw them?
This is what the beginning of the video included in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
The now-missing image was downloaded and used as the main photo in a MSN.com article (archived here) about the Epstein files release just hours after the Department of Justice made the download link publicly available on December 19, 2025.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of MSN.com)
MSN added the red circle around the two Trump images seen in the larger photo. The caption of the image read:
Trump pictured in a photo-in-a-photo: Epstein files released on DOJ's website.
The Justice.gov page (archived here) where the link to EFTA00000468.pdf would have been found sequentially -- between EFTA00000467.pdf and EFTA00000469.pdf -- was missing when this screenshot was captured on December 20, 2025.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of justice.gov)
Although this file is missing, it remained in online databases, such as this one (archived here) created by people who immediately downloaded the files soon after the government released the link. This is a screenshot of EFTA00000468.pdf on that site:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of epstein-files-browser.vercel.app)
This is a close up screenshot of the photos seen in EFTA00000468.pdf that appear to include Donald Trump:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of epstein-files-browser.vercel.app)
While we were unable to immediately determine if the photo of Trump with the women in swimsuits was previously released, the second image that is mostly hidden by the first appeared to be an image that was previously made public. It was a Getty Image photo that the BBC used to illustrate an article (archived here) on July 18, 2025. The caption read:
Donald Trump, his now wife Melania, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pose for a photo in February 2000
Lead Stories sent an email to the Department of Justice to ask for comment on the claim that they removed the photo of President Trump from the Epstein Library. There was no reply at the time of writing, but we will update this story if we get a statement.
